


A journey to an End

by Lacertae



Series: Soulmates [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 12:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15267462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacertae/pseuds/Lacertae
Summary: *Mentioned Mondatta/Zenyatta* soulmate au, companion piece to 'Loss and Gain'. Omnics have soulmarks. Mondatta just happens to find out how it works when it happens to him, as well.





	A journey to an End

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted to write Mondatta's side of this. I might also write a third piece for Zenyatta's other soulmate, though I had initally wanted to keep them vague.

**A journey to an End**

Omnics have soulmarks.

They can appear at any time, without warning.

Mondatta has seen it happen around him for years, with the same awe, every single time. Some omnics power up after a resting night to find something tucked neatly between the pistons of their necks, others have watched, amazed, as the symbol appears on them, slowly, like an invisible hand traced them on their bodies.

For the monks of the Shambali, soulmarks mean you are touched by the Iris –the truth of their message, the proof that omnics, just like humans, possess souls, and the ability to have emotions, and thoughts, and love, and hate.

Unfortunately, there are many who resist this –many humans who deny this fact, deny the omnics with soulmarks, deny them their truth. To them, omnics are liars, and thieves, and fakes.

And then there are also omnics who refuse to accept, refuse to believe.

Some of them because their marks never appear –and they feel themselves unwanted, and fear that without a mark they have no soul. Some others because their marks are black… their soulmates lost before they could even meet them, now too far to reach.

Was it a human? Was it another omnic, dead by the hand of humans? They don’t know, but the loss, the _proof_ of the loss, takes over everything, and fills them with pain.

Then there are those omnics whose soulmates they have met but that they had to watch be taken away, most of the time by humans. Mondatta has seen this happen as well, and those are the ones who have lost everything, and who deny soulmates the most. After all, if humans have souls, and humans took away an omnic’s mate, then what need do they have of feelings, and emotions?

Best do without. Best live and forget the memory of happiness.

Best forget about having a soul, let alone a soulmate.

Mondatta does not have a soulmark.

Every inch of his body is pristine, and free of marks. It has been this way since he onlined, since the first thought travelled through electric synapses, even before the real Mondatta existed.

This does not prevent him from knowing omnics have souls –from feeling his own soul burn within his core with the strength of the Iris, his conviction helping him move forwards.

Mondatta sheds his previous life and becomes something else, creates and recreates himself, creates the Shambali, meets new people every day, herds lost soul together and guides them under the light of the Iris.

He saves souls, or nurtures them until they can flourish.

Even if he had a soulmate, he would not cease this just for them.

That is until Null Sector raises its head.

Mondatta finds himself targeted –he should have expected it, he has clashed with their ideas enough times to know they’d retaliate, somehow, but by then it’s too late and he’s caught, together with a handful of his fellow monks and some humans who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

One of them gets hurt –not a big wound, she just scratches her arm on a wall trying to run, but it bleeds pretty badly for such a shallow cut.

A Null Sector omnic makes an aborted motion her way –something so small no one else notices, though Mondatta does, and he keeps an eye on that one. Unremarkable, just like most Null Sector omnics, as they do not quite value individuality because it reminds them too much of humanity, but he seems a little less sure than the rest, like a newly activated omnic among so many who know what to do.

When another omnic attempts to push the hurt woman away from the group, probably to isolate her, Mondatta rises to stop him… but that omnic moves before he can. He pushes, not too gently, the woman towards them again, ignoring the way his companion jerks and hisses at him, and Mondatta hears them converse in binary, volume low enough he only catches glimpses of it.

“Alone she will learn not to try and run,” the other omnic grunts, but the one who pushed her back into the group shakes his head.

“She is wounded, and scared. We will not gain the Shambali’s support if we hurt her more.”

Mondatta catches some hesitation in his words, and probes into him –careful not to push too much, he spreads his senses enough and what he feels startles him enough he almost loses his composure.

The omnic is choking under a gust of Discord, thick enough it wraps around his frame in dark coils. He senses the omnic is at war with himself, and that he does not like being here. He does not like violence.

It is useless to focus on him now, as the omnic moves away, following the other out of the room they’re keeping their captives into, so Mondatta moves to the woman’s side instead, gently holds her hand into his own and rips a part of his kasaya from his shoulder so he can tend to her wound.

When she gasps, softly, he thinks it is from the pain, so he apologizes, but her next words shock him to the core.

“You have a soulmark,” she whispers, awed.

Her eyes are wide, and she is staring at a part of his arm that was exposed when he ripped off his clothes. Mondatta, startled, follows her eyes and–

It is small, blossoming at the edge of his shoulder hinges, and it could pass for a scratch if it wasn’t so different from his polished colours.

It is a dull grey, an omnicode symbol that has never been there before.

Mondatta’s forehead array blinks off. “… that seems to be the case,” he says, and his tone sounds hollow even to his own auricular receptors. It takes him a few seconds where he blindly looks at it, realising what it means, before his thoughts finally restart and he makes himself look away and back to her. “I would be… grateful if you could not mention what you have seen.”

The woman’s mouth clamps close, though her eyes remain wide as she looks wildly around them, the pain of her arm forgotten. She checks, but no one seems to have heard, even as Mondatta casually pushes the shoulder of his kasaya down enough to cover the mark from sight.

There was no soulmark there until today, and she seems to understand this and keeps it quiet, allowing Mondatta his privacy. She curls her wounded arm protectively against her chest and falls quiet, but there is something in her gaze as she keeps glancing at him that Mondatta cannot read, though his thoughts are as far from her as they could be.

He has a soulmark, but for a long while, he does not understand the significance of its appearance. It is as novel for him as it would be for any omnic –a tiny, forgettable mark, if not for what it means.

So, rather than focus on that, Mondatta does what he’s always done –herds souls the right way. There is one particular soul that he’s caught a glimpse on that he truly wishes to guide down a better path and so, when that omnic appears again, Mondatta approaches him.

And when they leave King’s Row, when the OverWatch team saves them all, Mondatta takes with him two new, precious things –a soulmark and an omnic tucked away into spare Shambali cloaks, following him with his head held low and every part of his body hidden from sight, so no one will see the purple colour belonging to Null Sector peek from the folds.

And when weeks turn to months, and the Null Sector omnic abandons his roots and takes his life in his hands, changes his appearance, changes himself, Mondatta still does not understand –does not relate the mark to his meeting with this omnic. After all, how could he? The mark is grey, and that means he still has not met his soulmate… just that they exist.

And when the omnic comes to him, one day, fretful and hesitant, to tell him that he has decided on a name for himself, and asks to stay with the Shambali to become one of them, Mondatta welcomes him warmly yet still does not notice.

He notices only later that night, when he disrobes to clean the vents from dust and dirt, and realises that the tiny mark on his shoulder has turned golden.

Today, when Mondatta is sure he’s not seen, nor met, any new face, so busy working in the gardens, and then teaching, but…

But now, Mondatta understands.

Because when Mondatta and that Null Sector omnic’s lives met, it was the first step to the birth of Mondatta’s soulmate. He was not there yet, and thus the mark was grey.

And when that omnic chose his name for the first time, it was only _then_ that Mondatta’s soulmate truly came to be.

Mondatta’s own feelings, his pride for how far Zenyatta has come, his growing love for him, the care he feels… all of that has a new direction now, and one Mondatta never expected it to take.

And years later, when Mondatta stands in front of a crowd, in the same city where he’s met Zenyatta for the first time, and catches a glimpse of something coming his way, and his soul screams–

The last thought he has as he falls, as his processes fail and end, never to wake again, is that…

He is glad he never told him, for he might have spared his Light at least this pain… for to lose one’s soulmate is, in fact, the greatest loss.

At least, Zenyatta will have memories untainted by what could have been.

 

 


End file.
